I don’t think humanity is going to continue to agree to what is government approved torturing of people who have already undergone trauma. I don’t think humanity wants to be inhumane. So eventually those people who have altered states of consciousness and unusual sensory experiences won’t be subjected to a forced psychiatric regime, by the fearful public, who if they were better would never approve of such things as ECT and forced drugging.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Do pencils cure chemical prisons?

People don’t
realise that forcing medication for months or years is repeated trauma. It felt
like I was decaying from within when, in late 2010 and nearly all 2011, I was
forcefully injected. I had no idea how long I would remain under this sentence,
as psychiatrists could’ve kept me on this forever, for no crime.

I was told by psychiatrists that I had to be agreeable to their
treatment. I also knew from lawyers that I had to let my psychiatrist know
why they were legally obliged to change the drug I was on. Attempts to do this
took over nine months. The long-acting neuroleptic lasted in my system another
nine months or so. And the damage was well and truly done by then.

Part of the damage is a symptom
of this trauma, I’m still suffering from. It is a fairly mild form of Tourette’s
Syndrome. The drug I was on, Zuclophenthixol, is known to cause this. I also
believe the Tourette’s is a surface symptom, like a measles’ sore. Only I don’t
have a biological illness, I have a psychological one. My system could not cope
with the trauma the Zuclo caused. It freaked out. Although I suppressed
suicidal thoughts, ruled out ever doing anything to hurt my family and friends,
the Tourette’s continued to voice what it saw as the only way out of the
chemical prison I was in.

Now what I have is kind of akin to PTSD. I had the repeated trauma of
Zuclo last year, but this year I relive the feelings of hopelessness,
deterioration and lack of life. I am, however, overcoming this. My life is good
and I know it. I am building rather than breaking-down. It’s just sometimes the
memory grabs me and surfaces into a detached thought, a muscle reflex that
says, ‘I want to kill myself’, swears, or says in a little-girl voice, ‘Mummy’.

So I work through symbolism, what’s behind this image-wise, look at
inner-critics, and do parts-of-self dialoguing… anything to shift this, have
something change so that my mind doesn’t get the impulsive urge to say these
seemingly irrational repeated lines.

There isn’t a chemical or surgical cure for Tourette’s Syndrome, because
it’s trauma based. Well, what I have is. And from what I’ve researched this is
generally said to be the cause.

Psychosurgeons try things and shit, then claim cures… Psychiatrists will
prescribe a whole range of drugs that they normally give for epilepsy,
Parkinson’s, psychosis, bipolar… They have no idea how to cure Tourette’s. This
is admitted in Wikapedia.

I have a theory that my neurons were damaged by the Zuclo, so it was
actually a physical trauma and the Tourette’s is a reaction to that. My mind is
more or less saying, ‘I give up, I don’t know what to do!’ So, the lines I have
are in a way a cry for help, hoping for some compassion and understanding. But,
if spoke them in public, I wouldn’t get that too often.

If my body had continued being bombarded by the traumatic effects of the
Zuclo prison, I would’ve probably ended up mouthing the Tourette’s lines in
public. However, I am lucky that I have some mechanism that keeps my mouth shut
while in public and only mouths the lines when I think I am alone. In public I
will still get the lines in my head though and sometimes moving my tongue, but
my mouth remains closed.

Tourette’s is very different from voice hearing (which psychiatrists
term auditory hallucinations). Voice hearing isn’t something that happens to me
anymore. But when I had that, for nearly 13 years, it wasn’t repeated lines,
wasn’t accompanied by a twitch and it didn’t have the associated impulse to
speak the words. And the voices were often located outside my head, never on
the tip of my tongue. Tourette’s doesn’t lend itself to any conspiracies,
further thoughts, delusions, self-criticism, or creativity like voices do. Tourette’s
is more like a whip hitting me, a slap across the face, a momentary jolt,
totally disconnected from my belief system and dreams/ nightmares that I have had
while in psychosis and sleep.

I have days when the Tourette’s disappears. For instance I went to Venus
Bay with my partner and it didn’t occur for the whole two days we were there.
It was almost because I was accessing a part of my mind that had to do with
neologistic experiences, my thoughts didn’t even touch on the part of my mind
that still holds the unresolved Zuclo induced trauma.

I guess there is a certain amount of self-forgiveness I also have to go
through because the weird things I said and odd accusations I made during what I
consider my worst psychotic episode and my last. Worst, because I’d decided to
stand up and protest against things, in the parallel world to the actual thing
that was not being heard, recognised, or compensated by the public.

I made a video last year about attempting to gain momentary peace from
the surfacing symptoms that made me worry and hate myself more. In this video I
played a song I wrote about one of the Tourette’s lines.

Musical composition is one of the arts that I feel helps a person to
transform their ‘problem’ into something that can be shared without seeming too
much of a burden to the listener. Even if the composition is never shared with
another, it is something that can be witnessed by the person who composed it,
while they are performing it. And I think there is definite catharsis in this.

In the video I termed what I had as ‘post-psychotic-depression’, because
there was an overwhelming emotion of sadness in me that I felt at the time, which
I’d found some relief from by putting a pencil between my teeth. This worked
the first time in giving me some happiness, really well, but the smile action
of the muscle memory had less effect when I attempted to use the pencil more
often.

I sat reading with the pencil in my mouth, drooling a bit and found even
the tiny relief it gave was worth something. But it is only a memory trigger of
some kind and the more I recognised that it was only a pencil in my mouth, not
actual happiness, the less it worked. If you think of the Pavlov’s dogs
experiment, the more often they weren’t given food after the bell rung, the
less they would drool at the bell ringing, even when they’d been conditioned
into it, by the reward of food. I smiled, remembered happier times, then
recognised there was not much happening happily in my head because of the Zuclo
prison and the happy effect didn’t last as long, or exist as strongly. My mind
went, oh, it’s that pencil thing again is it? Well, don’t be so silly, I want
you to get out of the rut you’re in and stop that chemical entering my system,
get on with it! Don’t try and trick me in false feelings!

I wanted the feeling happiness, even if it was false, but my body is
more sensible than that. I realised what I really wanted was to take all that stuff
that was bothering me and make it humorous, then I could move on. I still haven’t
got there, but I have so many beautiful, wonderful people in my life I believe
I will get to the point of clearing my sore points.